Early-retirement penalty for long-serving workers to go in August

Portugal’s prime minister, António Costa, has announced that the Socialist government is to implement a one-off increase in pensions in August and eliminate penalties for those who retire at 60 and who began working at 14.

These measures to boost pensions and for the “protection” of those who have contributed to social security for an especially long period were announced by Costa in parliament during the fortnightly debate, in a speech focussing on social policy and in which he quoted the former Communist activist Soeiro Pereira Gomes.“It is also with these people in mind that this parliament approved the extraordinary update in pensions that we shall put into effect as soon as August,” he said. “It is to offer justice to these men and women that we are defining new conditions for access to early retirement, in line with the government’s programme and in permanent dialogue with the majority in parliament and social partners,” he added, in a reference to the leftist parties that provide the minority government with its support base, and to trade unions and employers.Of the elimination of penalties for those who have worked since 14, this was about “righting the injustice that was worsened in recent years, with the double penalising effect of the increase in the retirement age and the worsening of the sustainability factor that rose from 5.4 percent to 12.3 percent,” Costa said, in a criticism of the previous, right-of-centre government’s change to the formula by which the official retirement age has been raised to take account of rising life expectancy.

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